"Better than most, at any rate," Porculey said comfortably. His brush tip, having grazed briefly at his palette, darted out at the gloom again, altered it infinitesimally. "Because I did more than just dry research," he went on. "I looked at the paintings, but more than that I tried to look through them, past them. I tried to see Veenbes in his studio, approaching the canvas. I wanted to see how he held his brush, how he stroked the paint into place, how he made his decisions, his changes. Did you know his brush strokes move diagonally upward to the left? That's very rare, you might think he was left-handed, but there are two portraits done by his contemporaries that show him at his easel with the brush in his right hand."

Dortmunder said, "What difference does it make?"

"It changes the way the picture takes the light," Porculey told him. "Where it reflects, and how the eye is led through the story."

All of which was over Dortmunder's head. "Well, whatever you did," he said, "it looks terrific."

Porculey was pleased. Smiling briefly over his shoulder, he said, "I wanted to wait till I had something worth showing. You see that, don't you?"

"Sure. And it's just about done, huh?"

"Oh, yes. Another two or three weeks, probably no more." Dortmunder stared at the back of Porculey's head, then at the painting. "Two or three weeks? That's a whole painting there already, you could fool a lot of people the way it is right now."

"But not Arnold Chauncey," Porculey said. "Not even for a second. I did some research on your customer while I was about it, and you chose a difficult man to fool. He isn't just another culture merchant, buying and selling works of art as though they were coin collections. He's a connoisseur, be knows art, and he certainly knows his own paintings."

"You're making me unhappy," Dortmunder said.

Cleo, friendly and sympathetic, was immediately at his elbow, holding up the glass jug of wine. "Have some more," she suggested. "Everything'll work out. Porky's doing you proud."

"It isn't Pork, uh, Porculey I'm worried about," Dortmunder told her. "I got talked into another Andy Kelp Special, that's what I'm worried about."

"Seems like a nice fellow, Kelp," Porculey said.

"Doesn't he," said Dortmunder.

Porculey stepped back to give his work the critical double-O. "You know," he said, "I really am quite good at this sort of thing. Better even than those twenties. I wonder if there's a future in it."

"There's ten thousand from us," Dortmunder reminded him, "if the scheme works and we get Chauncey's money. That's the only future I know about."

"Ah," Porculey said, "but what if I took my knowledge of Veenbes, his subject matter, his palette, his style, and what if I did a Veenbes of my own? Not a copy, but a brand-new painting. Unknown old masters crop up all the time, why not one by me?"

"I wouldn't know," Dortmunder said.

Porculey nodded, thinking it over. "A lot better than drawing twenties," he said. "Very dull, that was. No palette at all. A few greens, a black, and that's it. But a Veenbes, now." His eyes were half-closed, no longer seeing the semi-Veenbes in front of him. "A medieval convent," he said. "Stone walls and floor. Candles. The nuns have just removed their habits… ."

Chapter 9

Eight days later, Dortmunder entered the main borough office of the Unemployment Insurance Division and waited his turn to be inspected by the guard just inside the door. The guard was examining the purse of a woman client in search of guns or bombs or other expressions of political discontent, and he was in no hurry to finish. Dortmunder was dressed today in dark green work pants, a flannel jacket and a heavy workman's belt festooned with tools, and he was carrying a clipboard.

The woman client, whose brown skin and surly manner had made her a prima facie subject for official suspicion, had proved too clever for Authority this time, having left all her guns and bombs at home. The guard reluctantly let her through, then turned to Dortmunder, who plunked his clipboard onto the rostrum and said, "Typewriter repair."

"Which department?" Since Dortmunder was tall and male and white and not a client and not carrying any packages that might conceal guns or bombs, the guard had no reason to suspect him of anything.

"Beats me," Dortmunder said. Running a finger down the top sheet on his clipboard, he said, "They just give me this address, that's all. The typing pool, it says."

"We got four typing pools in this building," the guard said.

"I'm just the guy they send around," Dortmunder told him.

"Well, how do I know what department?"

"Beats me," Dortmunder said.

There's a difference between a client and a workman, and the difference holds true everywhere, not merely in the Unemployment Insurance Division of the Department of Labor of the State of New York. The difference is, the client is there because he wants something, but the workman doesn't give a damn what happens. The workman won't extend himself, won't try to help, won't provide explanations, won't in fact do anything but just stand there. The client wants to be liked, but the workman is just as willing to go back to his boss, shrug, and say, "They wouldn't let me in."

Everybody knows this, of course, including the guard on the door, who looked unhappily into Dortmunder's unhelpful eyes for a moment, then sighed, and said, "All right. I'll call around." And he picked up his phone from the rostrum, simultaneously scanning his list of interior phone numbers.

The guard struck gold the first try, which didn't surprise Dortmunder at all. "I'll send him right up," he told the phone, cradled it, and said to Dortmunder, "Osro."

"What?"

"Out-of-State Resident Office, upstairs. Go to the end of that hall there, take the elevator to the third floor."

"Right."

Dortmunder, following instructions, eventually found himself in Osro, a large room full of desks and clerks and typewriters, semi-separated from one another by clusters of filing cabinets. He went to the nearest desk, bearing the sign INFORMATION, and told the girl there, "Typewriter repair. They just called up from downstairs."

"Oh, yes." She pointed. "The typing pool. Down past the second bunch of filing cabinets and turn right."

"Fine," Dortmunder said, and went to the typing pool, where the woman in charge, a tall gray-haired person with a face and body the texture of concrete, frowned at him, and said, "Do you know it's been nearly three weeks since we put in our Form Two-Eighty-B?"

"I just do my job, lady," Dortmunder said. "Where is it?"

"Over here," she said, grumping, and led the way.

Of course, every large bureaucracy has many typing pools, and every typing pool's typewriters break down from time to time, and no request for repairs ever takes less than four months to filter through that particular bureaucracy, so the woman in charge should have been grateful to Dortmunder for being so prompt, instead of complaining; but there's too little gratitude in this world.

The woman left Dortmunder alone at the typewriter, a large Royal electric. He plugged it in and turned it on and the thing buzzed at him. He hit a few keys in his normal terrible typing style, and found that the machine's problem was a refusal to automatically return when the automatic return button was pushed. He spent another two or three minutes fiddling with it, then unplugged it, picked it up – the thing weighed a ton – carried it over to the ungrateful woman's desk, and said, "I'll have to take it to the shop."

"We never get machines back that go to the shop," the woman said, which was probably true. It was certainly true of the last machine Dortmunder had taken from this building, about two years ago.

Dortmunder said, "I'll leave it if you want, but it needs work in the shop."